The purpose of this report is to present a number of generally less broad legislative proposals related to child welfare financing have been introduced in the 108th Congress. Additional child welfare-related proposals designed to improve services, promote timely placement of children across state lines, and for other purposes, are described in this report.

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This report describes the Proposed Legislative Changes Affecting Pharmaceutical Patents on Hatch-Waxman Act. The Hatch-Waxman Act provides the FDA with certain authorities to offer periods of marketing for a pharmaceutical independent of the rights conferred by patents.

Energy supplies and prices are a major economic factor in the United States, and energy markets are volatile and unpredictable. For both these reasons, energy policy is of frequent interest to the Congress. This report presents a statistical view of the supply and consumption of various forms of energy. After an introductory overview of aggregate energy consumption, the report presents detailed analysis of trends and statistics regarding specific energy sources: oil, electricity, natural gas, and coal. A section on trends in energy efficiency is also presented.

Legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security includes provisions for an information analysis element within the new department. This report examines the information analysis function and the sharing of information among federal agencies but does not address provisions in the proposed legislation governing the sharing of intelligence with state and local officials.

The report discusses the consumer class action bill of rights in each proposal contains safeguards which provide for judicial scrutiny of coupon and other non-cash settlements, protection against a proposed settlement that would result in a net loss to a class member, protection against discrimination based upon geographic location, and prohibition on a class representative receiving a greater share of the award.

This report provides the information related to the fishery, aquaculture, and marine mammal issues in the 108th Congress

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On November 5, 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-508) was signed into law. P.L. 101-508 added Title V to the Congressional Budget Act. Title V, also called the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (the FCRA), changed how the unified budget reports the cost of federal credit activities (i.e., federal direct loans and loan guarantees). Before the fiscal year 1992 (FY1992), for a given fiscal year, the budgetary cost of a new direct loan or loan guarantee was the net cash flow for that fiscal year.

Construction of large water resource projects, such as those of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), can be controversial because they involve trade-offs among various river uses, and between current and future generations. Pursuant to federal water project planning guidelines, the Corps weighs these trade-offs using benefit-cost analysis. If its analysis shows that a project’s national economic development (NED) benefits exceed its NED costs, the Corps seeks project authorization from Congress. Congress authorizes the Corps to construct some of these large water projects through (usually) biennial Water Resource Development Acts. Since the Corps rarely recommends a project that does not have a benefit-cost ratio greater than 1.0, this report describes the decisions that influence this ratio, with a focus on the role of the discount rate.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21 st Century (TEA-21), Congress authorized federal funding for New Starts fixed guideway transit projects--including rail and bus rapid transit projects that met certain criteria. In response to an annual mandate under TEA-21, GAO assessed the New Starts evaluation and ratings process for the fiscal year 2004 cycle, including (1) changes to the process and any related issues and (2) any challenges related to New Starts initiatives contained in the administration's fiscal year 2004 budget proposal."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On May 29, 2003 GAO briefed the Subcommittee on Defense, House Committee on Appropriations' staff on the fiscal year 2004 budget request for the Virginia class submarine program. This letter summarizes the information we provided in that briefing on the advantages that multiyear procurement authority offers the Virginia class submarine program as well as the risks of actually realizing these advantages."

During the past 30 years superconducting magnet systems have enabled accelerators to achieve energies and luminosities that would have been impractical if not impossible with resistive magnets. By far, NbTi has been the preferred conductor for this application because of its ductility and insensitivity of Jc to mechanical strain. This is despite the fact that Nb{sub 3}Sn has a more favorable Jc vs. B dependence and can operate at much higher temperatures. Unfortunately, NbTi conductor is reaching the limit of it usefulness for high field applications. Despite incremental increases in Jc and operation at superfluid temperatures, magnets are limited to approximately a 10 T field. Improvements in conductor performance combined with future requirements for accelerator magnets to have bore fields greater than 10 T or operate in areas of large beam-induced heat loads now make Nb{sub 3}Sn look attractive. Thus, laboratories in several countries are actively engaged in programs to develop Nb{sub 3}Sn accelerator magnets for future accelerator applications. A summary of this important research activity is presented along with a brief history of Nb{sub 3}Sn accelerator magnet development and a discussion of requirements for future accelerator magnets.

This report provides the technical basis for high efficiency particulate air filter (HEPA) for Hanford tank farm ventilation systems (sometimes known as heating, ventilation and air conditioning [HVAC]) to support limits defined in Process Engineering Operating Specification Documents (OSDs). This technical basis included a review of older technical basis and provides clarifications, as necessary, to technical basis limit revisions or justification. This document provides an updated technical basis for tank farm ventilation systems related to Operation Specification Documents (OSDs) for double-shell tanks (DSTs), single-shell tanks (SSTs), double-contained receiver tanks (DCRTs), catch tanks, and various other miscellaneous facilities.

The long-term objective of this DOE project was to develop a new class of metal nanoparticles with novel optical properties for ultrasensitive detection and spectroscopy. The specific aims were (1) to prepare and screen colloidal silver and gold nanoparticles with novel optical properties; (2) to characterize the intrinsic size-dependent properties of these nanoparticles and to identify the factors responsible for efficient optical enhancement; (3) to determine the characteristics and origins of intermittent photon emission in single metal particles; and (4) to develop methodologies for enriching these novel particles and for fabricating thin nanoparticle films.

The Fermilab Tevatron has the unique opportunity to explore physics at the electroweak scale with the highest ever proton-antiproton collision energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV and unprecedented luminosity. About 20 times more data is expected to be collected during the first phase of the collider Run II which is in its second year of data-taking. The second phase of Run II, expected to begin in 2005, will increase the integrated luminosity to about 10-15 fb{sup -1}. Discovering a low mass Higgs boson and evidence for Supersymmetry or for other new physics beyond the Standard Model are the main physics goals for Run II. It is widely recognized that the use of advanced analysis methods will be crucial to achieve these goals. I discuss the current status of Run II at the Tevatron, prospects and foreseen applications of advanced analysis methods.

The CDF experiment's Silicon Vertex Trigger is a system of 150 custom 9U VME boards that reconstructs axial tracks in the CDF silicon strip detector in a 15 {mu}sec pipeline. SVT's 35 {mu}m impact parameter resolution enables CDF's Level 2 trigger to distinguish primary and secondary particles, and hence to collect large samples of hadronic bottom and charm decays. We review some of SVT's key design features. Speed is achieved with custom VLSI pattern recognition, linearized track fitting, pipelining, and parallel processing. Testing and reliability are aided by built-in logic state analysis and test-data sourcing at each board's input and output, a common inter-board data link, and a universal ''Merger'' board for data fan-in/fan-out. Speed and adaptability are enhanced by use of modern FPGAs.

Possibilities to accumulate antiprotons in the Recycler are considered for three different cases: with current stochastic cooling, with upgraded stochastic cooling and with electron cooling. With stochastic cooling only, even upgraded, Recycler looks hardly useful. However, with electron cooling at its goal parameters and reasonably good vacuum in the Recycler, this machine would be efficient.

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This report was written to present climatological summaries of the wind data at the Central Climatology (CC) tower in a convenient format and to point out some features of the wind speed and direction that have not been widely appreciated in the past. Short-term (two-week) wind roses provide a means to demonstrate the temporal and spatial relationships that wind speed and direction undergo using a ten-year database from the CC tower. These relationships are best demonstrated by examining the figures provided in this report or looking at loops of computer-generated images provided by the authors.

Cryogenic calorimeters are used for x-ray detection because of their exquisite energy resolution and have found application in x-ray astronomy, and the search for dark matter. These devices operate by detecting the heat pulse produced by ionization in an absorber cooled to temperatures below 1 K. Such temperatures are needed to lower the absorber's heat capacity to the point that the deposition of even a few eV results in a measurable temperature excursion. Typical absorbers for dark matter measurements are massive Si or Ge crystals, and, with Ge, have achieved a resolution of 650 eV at 10 keV. Chow, et al., report the measurement of the 60 keV emission from {sup 241}Am with 230 eV resolution using a superconducting tin absorber. Cunningham, et al., also using a superconducting tin absorber, have recently reported a four-fold improvement over Chow. With such results being reported from the x- and gamma-ray world it is natural to examine the possibilities for cryogenic neutron spectroscopy. Such a detector would operate by detecting the heat pulses caused by neutron capture and scattering. To date, {sup 6}LiF has been the absorber of choice because relatively large crystals can be grown, and it is an insulating material with …

The general aim of this project is to continue the design and implementation of a new sensor technology that offers the unprecedented levels of specificity needed for analysis of the complex chemical mixtures found at DOE sites nationwide. The new sensor concept combines the elements of electrochemistry, spectroscopy and selective partitioning into a single device that provides three levels of selectivity. The specific goal of this project is the development of a sensor for technetium (Tc) that is applicable to characterizing and monitoring the Vadose Zone and associated subsurface water at the Hanford site. The first goal is a sensor that determines technetium in the chemical form pertechnetate (TcO{sub 4}{sup -}). This report summarizes work during 6/16/01-6/15/02 of a three-year project that began on 9/15/99. During this period our efforts have focused on four areas that are discussed in the following sections. Electrochemistry of pertechnetate (TcO{sub 4}{sup -}) at bare ITO and film-coated ITO electrodes; Enhancing sensitivity by increasing analyte absorptivity; Development and characterization of selective films; and Improved field portable spectroelectrochemical sensor.